


the downward spiral

by Dorminchu



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Non-Graphic Violence, Open to Interpretation, POV Reiner Braun, Post-Time Skip, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Tension, Vignette, suicidal idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24598297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorminchu/pseuds/Dorminchu
Summary: Eye-to-eye, the enemy opens his mouth and says: "I'm the same as you."
Relationships: Annie Leonhardt & Bertholdt Hoover & Reiner Braun, Eren Jaeger & Reiner Braun, Eren Jaeger/Reiner Braun, Gabi Braun & Reiner Braun
Comments: 4
Kudos: 162





	the downward spiral

**Author's Note:**

> I promised I would give Reiner a proper shot some time ago.

He's twenty-one when he is elected Vice-Commander; given the requisite medal, the vermillion armband, minimal ceremony. The Titan Society expected him to come back alive, not empty-handed. Reporting Betholdt's death is another slight; Annie's capture stings the very worst of all.

On his tongue he tastes another, sharper word: _traitor_.

* * *

Off the train, his nostrils percolate with industrial fumes rather than Colt's stagnant vomit. Liberio.

The crowd, big enough to roar, only murmurs.

Reiner scans a sea of faces that do not matter. If he blinks he'll miss it—a flash of sadness in his mum's eyes before they sparkle with recognition, before her mouth crinkles upward. Gabi is still growing into her limbs, their arms a daisy-chain around him.

After six years of bad dreams he's back where he's always belonged; in the ghetto, without a father.

* * *

In the streets the Warrior cadets crowd around him, seeking a mother hen in Bertholdt's absence. If he thinks about Bertholdt for too long he gets cantankerous, brusque and their eyes fill with unease until he wills his tone back to a brittle state of congeniality that's never enough to bring them closer than an arm's distance.

In the errant flash of sunlight on glass he'll catch the back of a head that shouldn't be there—a stray trainee from Paradis island, the same emblem and leather jacket—the reflection of myriad corpses grinning back at him like ungodly devils (but they were only devils, and he is lucky to have survived) until Gabi touches his arm, calls his name.

He looks down at Gabi, bleeding the same idealistic outlook bordering on zealotry from her lips and eyes. He ruffles her hair, tells her gruffly: _Keep up your training with the Warrior unit so you don't end up old like me._

She's got a good spirit about her, too; laughs and says he isn't old, just silly. She's tough, like Eren had been, so he can't bring himself worry about her, only that he cannot be the role model she deserves. Maybe that was why he took a shine to Eren in the first place; mentoring a brother he never had to fill a void that didn't exist until Gabi was born.

* * *

Bertholdt isn't around to make sure who is who, anymore; Reiner has to be his own man. It's rote by now, just going through the motions of a living man without thinking about it beyond the literal actions, day-to-day—hell, he may as well be back in Paradis.

It takes everything he has not to consider the banality of his existence. An abundance of time to reflect on the rest of his term, what a mess he's made. He didn't watch Bertholdt die, or see Annie crystalise herself, but if he digs down deep into his semiconscious he can imagine one of them screaming before they're crushed, torn apart by blades and teeth and shellfire.

The rifle winks at him in the early morning light. Reiner shakes himself. How could a prisoner of war, so naïve within his own entrapment, yammering on about how he and everyone else needed to be free to explore the whole goddam world, understand that laughable irony?

* * *

When Reiner was twelve, he'd felt it was proper to be executed by someone you knew and trusted.

The muzzle of the gun is cold on his tongue, the phantom taste of copper. He doesn't bite down. No shortage of despair, just another emotion, harder to pin down, the same one that stays his finger from the trigger.

His jaw slacks. He's almost hyperventilating but has enough self-control to resist.

He remembers waking up this morning and kissing Gabi good-bye.

His eyes are wet. He blinks, viciously, until he can see again.

* * *

The electric torch casts his shadow into relief, a hulking, monstrous creation that dwarfs his own body.

Eye-to-eye, the enemy opens his mouth and says: "I'm the same as you." His working eye is clear, glaming in the yellow light. No anger in his words, only empathy.

He remembers the way Annie used to watch Eren when she thought no one else was looking—'specially not Mikasa. The boy was only a runt, then; Reiner never knew what she saw in him.

Heavy feeling twists in his chest, like someone scooped out his guts and weighed him down with stones instead. His tongue is leaden. Falco Grice doesn't exist.

The boy who has grown into a man stands taller than Bertholdt, almost. His hair grows wild, unkempt, though his body is not so lank.

Reiner kneels without needing to be commanded or controlled, forgets why he is doing so. A shadow of himself begs to be euthanised. Retribution six years too late, owed to the only other man who will look at him earnestly. It had been better when he imagined him dead. Not like this, mutilated, his rage reduced to dying embers. 

* * *

He's awake, soaked in sweat. All the muscles in his body feel like they've been overcooked and stretched out on a spit.

Behind the warm darkness of his eyelids he can still see the hand beckoning, bloody, one green eye vacant, piercing, a sense of loss better felt than said. He was just shy of handsome with the hole in his head where an eye ought to be, scarring that ran down his cheeks unmistakable—upside his temples and down his throat, maybe—at last, marking them equals.


End file.
